Thinking about taking the SneakPeek Early Gender Prediction Test?

If you had asked me, I would have happily told you I was having my sixth bouncing baby boy, and no one could be more excited than I was.

Let’s back up a bit.

I found out I was expecting number six in early July. Within 48 hours of the darkest first pregnancy test I’ve ever taken, I was hit with nausea and vomiting like I’d never experienced.

The trail between the couch and the toilet was well-worn, and the couch itself began to lose its usual squishy vigor after days and days of its owner laying on it like a limp noodle.

This was early pregnancy gone wild. Wildly horrible.

A few months before this, one of my bosom friends (shout out to all the Anne of Green Gables fans) also found out she was pregnant. Being up on all the pregnancy trends, she told me about this really amazing blood test she had used to find out the sex of her baby early. It was called the SneakPeek Early Gender Detection DNA Test and it was available on Amazon for just $79.00. (This is an affiliate link – please see here for more details)

We’re talking the peestick is barely dry, nine weeks along, early.

So of course, being a lab geek, I looked up this magical home gender test. I absolutely had to figure out if this was legitimate or not. If you’ve ever looked up early gender detection tests on Amazon you’ll quickly realize there is a lot of hokey, completely unreliable, not-a-bit scientific crap available. (affiliate link)

Since I wasn’t required to pee in a cup and wait for a supernatural color change, or swing a spirit crystal on a silver chain over my belly and wait for it to change directions, I was pretty confident this test might actually be the real deal.

SneakPeek Early Gender Detection DNA Test Methodology

Without getting into a lot of eye-glazing science, I can tell you that the basic science behind the test is this – a sample of your blood is run on a special analyzer that uses a process called Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). Fetal blood begins to cross into mom’s bloodstream around nine weeks, which is why this test can be run so early in the pregnancy.

Basically, the analyzer is programmed to look for a tiny bit of DNA code, while also amplifying the code over and over and over until it’s finally detectable by the analyzer.

If it never detects the code the result is negative. If it does detect the code, the result is positive.

Saavy?

In this case, the tiny bit of code the analyzer is searching for is a signature part of the Y chromosome. If Y chromosome is present, the result is positive and since females (mom and baby) have two X chromosomes, any Y present indicates a male. Yay, males!

If that bit of chromosome is not detected, it means that the baby is a girl. Yay, females!

So of course, being comfortable with the science behind the test, I started planning to take it as soon as I was within the safe testing zone.

Reasons One Might Take an Early Detection Gender Test

First of all, finding out if you are having a little boy or little girl is such an incredible part of the pregnancy journey, at least, it has been for us.

I always thought we would be ‘team green’ for all of our pregnancies. After finding out we were having multiples, life had a way of changing my mind for me. For some great reasons waiting until the baby is born is the best check out this great article about Why You Shouldn’t Find Out Your Baby’s Sex by The Salty Mamas.

People find out ahead of time for lots of reasons:

The ease of planning for the nursery, clothing, narrowing down a baby name by 50%, etc.

They just can’t wait to know – hey, 40 weeks is a long time!

They love bonding with the baby before he or she arrives.

In all of my pregnancies, I could have said it was any of those reasons. Honestly, I would open Christmas presents early with just a little less self-control*, but in this case, it had a lot more to do with the fear of being disappointed.

Disappointed at an Ultrasound

You see… I have five boys. I love my five boys. I would go to the ends of our beautiful Earth for any one of my children. I would literally walk through fire or die for any of my children.

But deep down in this mama heart, I really wanted to experience having a girl. Just once.

I wanted to parent a daughter. I wanted to know the relationship between a mom and a daughter from the mom side of the equation.

The relationship I have with my own mom is so incredibly important and edifying, I never imagined not experiencing it with my own daughter someday.

I wanted to watch my husband hold his baby daughter for the first time and melt into a puddle of adoring goo.

(Side note: No, we didn’t ‘keep going’ just to get a girl. No, I don’t know if we’re done yet. Yes, I do know how babies happen. Yes, it IS a miracle we still have time and energy for that.)

We didn’t find out until the birth for our 3rd pregnancy because I thought that for sure I would just be thrilled when the baby got here safely. I was absolutely excited, and grateful for that baby boy when he was born.

That didn’t stop the emotions a few days later when I broke down with what was surely hormone-charged baby blues and told my mom how sad I was that I would “never have this (mother-daughter) relationship.”

After finding out our sweet #5 was another precious little boy, I cried at the ultrasound. Apparently, the odds of having a girl actually plummet after you’ve had multiple baby boys. The same is true of having multiple baby girls in a row.

Sure, I was fine by the time we got five minutes out the door, we had a beautiful son! But that ultrasound tech got to see my grief over being without the daughter my heart secretly longed for.

It was something I never wanted to repeat.

Deep down, I felt like a spoiled child – how could I possibly be upset with God for this absolutely perfect miracle growing healthy and strong inside of me?

Whatever future ultrasounds awaited, if there was a chance I could know and prepare myself emotionally ahead of time, I wanted it.

I think what I actually wanted was an easy way out of feeling my emotions over the loss of what I thought my family was going to be. The dream I had built up in my head, despite the reality of the beautiful dream coming true in my five amazing boys.

But really, are our families ever what we expected? Does everything always go to plot?

I never once imagined my path to sainthood would be wrought by raising a house FULL of boys. If raising them doesn’t help me get to heaven nothing will!

The Sneak Peek Early Gender Detection Test Process

After placing my order on Amazon, I received this tidy little box with a very clear warning. Do not let anyone with a Y chromosome near any of the contents of this box.

DNA is tenacious. Even the tiniest bit of contamination will affect your results for a PCR test.

After four weeks, it was finally time to unbox all the goodies and take the test.

My mom and I kicked the boys out of her house, and I turned her kitchen table into a veritable laboratory zone. The table was sanitized and any possible DNA was (hopefully) denatured by my obsessive amount of cleaning. Then, all the needed blood drawing supplies were set out upon the table.

At last, we reached the most important part and a critical juncture. It was time to clean my hands and get all those little boy chromosomes off them!

I scrubbed. I cleaned under my fingernails. My mom watched me turn my hands raw with scrubbing and drying and not touching anything.

To be honest, after nine years as a medical technologist with phlebotomy duties, I was pretty sure I had the whole ‘decontaminating my hands’ thing down pat.

After an easy finger poke, the conical vial was filled to the required amount of blood and the cap immediately sealed. I felt confident that I had done the best job an anxious, anal-retentive medical technologist could.

Now, all that was left was filling out the paperwork, shipping it in the mail, and crossing my fingers.

And Then We Waited

Normally, this wouldn’t be a time-sensitive process – however, all things considered, I decided that I didn’t want to find out the sex of the baby via email. What if I couldn’t wait and opened it without my husband there? *See above-stated inability to wait for anything, ever.

To take that possibility off the table I asked my pregnant friend if she would be willing to receive the email and do something fun to tell us the result together.

She jumped on the opportunity like she’d been waiting for me to ask her.

I reminded her, laughingly, this was our sixth baby and fifth pregnancy. No need to go whole hog or anything. She would have none of it. We already had close friends and family coming down for a birthday celebration a few days after the results would be in, so the whole thing was turned into a very intimate gathering.

The Big Result Reveal

The get together was great. She did such a fantastic job making everything beautiful and really celebrating this new life (even while being utterly exhausted by her own parenting and pregnancy!).

Our friends have always made having a houseful of kids feel so normal, even if they think we’re nuts. Of course, it just makes us love them all the more.

The exciting part of the evening was the many blue and pink frosted cupcakes that were saved for the end of dinner.

We decided that only one cupcake would have the colored filling to denote the official result, and it would be hidden among all of the cupcakes so no one would know if they were holding it. Hooray for surprises!

The group split into teams with my three-year-old and myself on the boy side and everyone else voting girl.

We all bit into our cupcakes with breathless anticipation. Doubtless, for 97% of the group, the excitement was the actual cupcake, not the revealing moment. Believe me, I was right there with them on that.

As luck would have it, no one seemed to have gotten the icing-filled cupcake. Then I turned to my unsuspecting three-year-old son and noticed he hadn’t bitten into his yet.

The poor dear.

Instead of being a normal mom that gently encouraged him to eat his cupcake, I violently squished his little cake so we could all see the frosting hidden within. Immediately I yelled out “BLUE!?” in an incredulous voice before laying down on the ground in a mock faint.

My son began to cry.

It’s a BOY! Email Message from SneakPeek.

We had so much fun that night with our friends, it was really a great way to find out about our baby boy on board, with no emotional fall-out.

Pro-tip: It helps to also just assume that every baby is a boy sometime after the third straight boy pregnancy.

The Months Roll By

For all of August, September and most of October, I happily told everyone that asked about our newest baby boy. I was going to be a six-pack boy mom. I was confident I had done everything right for the Sneak Peek test, understood the science, and trusted the results.

My husband, who hated the idea of the blood test, was reluctantly telling people we were having another boy, but would not truly believe it until the ultrasound at 20 weeks. Even then, he had his doubts.

Either way, when it came down to it – I was excited about having another boy. It was fun to be a statistical anomaly. Furthermore, I have experience raising boys. I have all the clothes I need for a boy. He would be a welcome addition to our growing tribe of little men.

The Twenty Week Ultrasound

Finally, it was time for the twenty week anatomy scan to make sure baby boy was growing properly.

On the trip to the clinic, I told me husband that I was “so anxious to see this little one, and just know that he is growing well in there.” Ultrasounds always make me nervous. Show me a beating heart first thing, then we can proceed and I can breathe.

When we got there, we told the ultrasound tech right away about the early SneakPeek gender test and joked about having six boys through the first few minutes of the ultrasound.

She asked a couple more questions about the PCR test, so I went ahead and explained more of the process, thinking that she was just curious about the whole deal.

Me: Well, it’s this cool early gender DNA test that you can do at home, there’s a small chance of contamination, but the science behind it is sound.

Her: …Ok, well, uh, because if you hadn’t told me you were having a boy… I would be telling you that you are having a girl. There are no little boy parts.

Me:

Husband:

Me:

Her: See?

Me: *no clue what I’m seeing*

Husband:*no clue what he’s seeing*

Me:

Husband:

Me: ….are you kidding?!

Her: Not at all.

Husband: I TOLD YOU SO!

Me: OH MY GOSH, WHAAT?

*cue shit-eating grin*

She checked that particular anatomy no less than three times during the scan, just to be sure.

Let’s be honest. I have seen my share of ultrasound penises. There was nary a willy to be found. The giddy excitement that we had somehow conceived a baby girl and not a baby boy gradually began to sink in.

As happy ultrasound shocks go, this registers as a solid number two (haha…number two…), being eclipsed only by the news back in 2010 that we were pregnant with triplets. We would go on to lose one of those babies very early, but the memory of three heartbeats will last forever.

Truthfully, ultrasounds have provided me with the most amount of speechlessness from my husband in our entire married life.

That’s saying something, trust me.

The Aftermath

There was nary a willy to be found.

It was hilarious calling the party-goers from a few weeks back to let them know the news. None of them could believe it either. Thankfully, the pregnancy wasn’t ‘Facebook official’ yet, so I didn’t need to make a big retraction.

Even after multiple additional ultrasounds for gestational diabetes management, I just could not wrap my head around having a baby girl.

Even after hundreds of anatomy-proving diaper changes, I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that we somehow were blessed with a daughter after bonding with my “sixth son” for a trimester. It boggles the mind. It makes me laugh.

It is overwhelmingly wonderful.

To tell you the truth, I’m a little scared of raising a girl – which is another post for a future date – but I am so happy that I get to be her mama, and can only hope that I will do as good of a job with her as my mom did with me. If I can be half that mom, she will probably turn out okay.

My Recommendation For the SneakPeek Early Gender Prediction Test

Obviously, at some point in the meticulous blood drawing process, I contaminated the specimen. I probably spend so many hours with boys that half of my external cells are actually male. So much for being a pro at phlebotomy.

The SneakPeek company graciously offers a full refund if you send in a birth certificate proving that they were wrong on the result that was received by the customer. I haven’t gotten around to that yet due to the busyness of life and generally being unable to remember anything. I suppose it’s probably time to get my money back.

It wasn’t a traumatizing experience by any means, but if it had gone the other way – a situation where a girl was the result but a boy was actually in utero – the emotional response would have been much more pronounced.

As far as future pregnancies – no – I won’t be testing early ever again. I’m unable to emotionally separate myself from the results, try as I may to convince myself otherwise. I’m absolutely positive the friend that initially told me about the test would definitely take it again. Her little girl result was followed up with an actual little girl.

It was fun, the party was heartwarming, and it makes for a fantastic cautionary tale, but unless you are able to be completely okay with the incredibly minute chance that the test is wrong (in a controlled environment the test has >99% accuracy) don’t take the SneakPeek Early Gender Detection DNA Test.

If you are okay with that very small margin of possibility, and you relish the adventure of finding out early – go for it, get your own SneakPeek and enjoy the adventure. (affiliate link)

If you enjoyed this please like and share the love!

Have you taken the SneakPeek test? – let me know your experience in the comments!

I just want to say thank you for being honest about wanting a girl, amidst the boys. It feels a little like parents of only boys aren’t allowed to say that they want a girl – the only acceptable response is “I’m happy with only boys, I couldn’t imagine any other life.” I’m very much looking forward to seeing your journey of raising your little girl!

This was such a fun and interesting story! I never even knew this test existed, but I’d almost certainly contaminate it, since I’m always covered in dog and cat hair.

I will also say that I definitely had my heart set on a girl for my first baby, but never once felt I could say it to anyone but my husband and close friends. I did get my girl (which SHOCKED me at the ultrasound, because everyone had been insisting it would be a boy), and I’m so happy you did, too! Mary is adorable, and she’s gonna love growing up in that wild household with all of her big brothers.

Loved reading this! Because according to my Sneak Peek result I got today, we are having a 3rd little boy and I feel those emotions you described. I felt in my gut it would be a girl and I’m wrong. I never imagined not having a girl and here I am with all boys and frankly I’m upset. Maybe it will be wrong but I’m not counting on it….mostly because I’m already heartbroken and just need to find a way to cope and be thankful to God for even allowing me to be a mother. Maybe I’m just meant to raise solid strong boys who will empower their future spouses and stand up for the women in their life. Anyway thanks for sharing your story! Congrats on your precious girl and raising those awesome boys!